The Atlanta Hawks have been up and down throughout the 2024-25 NBA season, currently heading for the Play-In tournament for a fourth straight year. Trae Young has been playing some of the best basketball of his career over the last month, but it hasn't been enough to lift Atlanta out of the cycle of mediocrity spanning back the last few seasons.

Recently, Young sat down with NBA insider Chris Haynes on “The Haynes Briefs Podcast” and got surprisingly candid on the Hawks' status within the Eastern Conference.

“I understand the space that we’re in right now,” said Young, per Joshua Buckhalter of Soaring Down South. “There’s probably two– or maybe three – teams in the East that people really can see as contending teams. And for us, I don’t think we’re there yet, and I feel like that’s okay. I feel like here in a couple years we could be, or in the next year we could be.”

Young added that “right now, this is a good spot for us to work on the right habits. Because we have talent.”

Still, that doesn't mean Young can't see this current group raising some eyebrows over the next few weeks.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t go in and surprise people and make some noise and do something that people don’t think we can do,” Young said. “But it’s just having the right mindset on this whole process and whole thing, and making sure we don’t lose track of the main side on just getting better this season and making sure every day, that’s what we’re doing.”

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An interesting spot for the Hawks

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The Hawks are undeniably in a better position than they were at this time a year ago thanks to the emergence of young players like Dyson Daniels and Zaccharie Risacher, each of whom seem to fit the modern positionless basketball archetype.

If Jalen Johnson were healthy, it's possible that this Hawks squad could have worked their way into the top six and had a real chance of winning a playoff series.

However, as things stand, Young will look to use his wizardry this postseason to wring everything he can out of a group that can be offensively challenged at times.